


Primes

by Ever-so-reylo (Ever_So_Reylo)



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: (kind of), (sort of), Academia, Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Boss/Employee Relationship, Canonical Age Difference, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, First Time, Genius Ben Solo, Genius Rey, Geniuses, Loss of Virginity, Mathematicians, Minor Finn/Rose Tico, Mutual Pining, Professor Kylo Ren, Sexual Tension, Smart Is The New Sexy, Teacher-Student Relationship
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-20
Updated: 2020-02-28
Packaged: 2021-02-27 09:07:26
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 18,299
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22324540
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ever_So_Reylo/pseuds/Ever-so-reylo
Summary: “The problem you gave me. Haveyousolved it?”“Yes.” He doesn’t hesitate to answer her, but there is no conceit in his voice. Just the facts. The fact, singular.Rey swallows. Her throat is a little dry. “So… So you know how it feels.”“How what feels?”“This.” She moves her hand in an oddly nonsensical gesture, an inchoate movement that simply encompasses the two of them. “Being… like this.”He studies her for so long, Rey is almost sure that he has no clue what she means. But then something shifts in his eyes, and she begins to wonder why he looks at her like that. Like he’s trying to take her apart and piece her back together.“I do,” he answers softly.Or:Good Will Hunting AU (sort of) in which Rey Johnson, an unrecognized genius, finds herself studying advanced mathematics with Doctor Ben Solo.ON HIATUS❤️
Relationships: Kylo Ren/Rey, Rey/Ben Solo, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 739
Kudos: 2276





	1. The Problems

Someone has proven the theorem.

Or at least attempted to.

After three months, seven weeks, and five days, someone has finally attempted to prove the theorem. Ben didn’t even bother glancing at the blackboard when he came in, but he supposes he should have known from the fact that his class seems to have tripled in size since the last lecture he gave, on Friday afternoon. Or from the sudden, suspicious way everyone hushed the moment he stepped inside the lecture hall. 

It’s entirely possible that the attempt was mentioned in one of the four emails Mitaka sent him between last night and this morning: the ones Ben didn’t bother clicking on, because it’s seven-thirty a.m. on a Monday and the thought of acknowledging the existence of his overzealous TA—or of the outside world in general—is vaguely painful and whole lot irritating.

Still.

Now Ben is here, standing in front of the blackboard, travel mug of coffee still warm in his hand. The shower-damp ends of his hair tickle his nape, and he can see it with his own two eyes, that someone has attempted to prove the theorem.

It’s…

It’s a mess, this blackboard. A damn mess of chalk smudges and white scratches and ugly, poorly written symbols. 

“Doctor Solo,” someone says tentatively from right below the podium. It’s unusual for Ben, to have students sitting in the first row. They usually don’t make it past the fifth, tops, since even in large lecture halls they tend to be too scared of him to get any closer. But today the room is too crowded for any of that. “Is the answer correct?”

Ben turns around, taking a moment to survey the class. He has reached that depressing, unavoidable point in the semester where, despite his best efforts, he is starting to recognize some of his students’ faces. In a few exceedingly unfortunate cases he can even match them with first or last names, and isn’t that a damn waste of brain power? And yet, he has no idea who the person who just spoke is—a slight girl with straight blonde hair and no other defining characteristics. 

As soon as his eyes fall on her she flushes violently. Ben ignores her.

“Who did this?” he asks. To no one in particular.

He does have a couple of decently brilliant students, in this advanced undergraduate class that is supposedly made up of the most promising mathematical minds of their generation. It’s MIT, after all. There is that guy with the goatee and the Star Trek pins on his backpack who is always blissfully quiet but understands combinatorics in a way students are almost never able to; and two girls, the one with blue-green hair and a European accent who seems to enjoy showing up to Ben’s office hours a little too much, and another with an H-name he can never recall—Hannah or Heather or Hermione.  A couple more, too. 

So he scans the crowd, shuffling through the dozens of faces in search of his best students, going through them methodically, one by one. Whenever he finds a familiar one, he lets his gaze linger for a moment. They all stare back at him: some blankly, some sullenly, some just very, very curious.

“Who proved the theorem?” he asks again, voice louder and tone a little firmer. A lot firmer. It’s the tone that usually gets him what he wants.

Except that it doesn’t, not this time. Which makes Ben very, very annoyed—never advisable, and even less so at seven thirty-three on a Monday morning.

“Doctor Solo,” someone yells from the second to last row, raising his hand to better get his attention. “Is it proven correctly?”

Ben takes a deep breath, and turns to stare at the board. 

The handwriting—God, the handwriting is appalling. And why people born after the mid Nineties do not seem to be able to write in a straight line, he truly cannot fathom. But looking past that (with some real effort), focusing just on the content of the theorem…

The first step, yes, of course. And the von Mangoldt function—textbook. Euler's totient function, that too. Except that the way whoever did this addressed the logarithmic factors to get at the averaged error…

That’s odd. Very unusual. 

Ben first demonstrated this theorem prompted by his uncle when he was… he can’t even remember. Somewhere between eight and ten, probably. His own methods had been unconventional, in a way that Ben hadn’t quite been able to grasp at the time; it had caused a half proud, half uneasy expression to appear on Luke’s face as he surveyed Ben’s precise, neat handwriting. Not quite a frown, but the promise of one.

Ben’s outlook on the Bombieri–Vinogradov’s theorem was always slightly less-than-orthodox. But _this_ , this is—different.

_Blunt_ , he would say. Not wrong, not inexact by any means, but a little clumsy. There’s a leap between the different steps, a web of connections in the formula, that is as reckless as effective. And then the last step—intelligent and subversive. A patchwork of elegance and brute force.

Beautiful.

Ben doesn’t turn before saying:

“Yes.”

…

“No.”

“Yes.”

“No.”

“Yes.”

“ _No_. Rose. Please, _please_ _no_.”

“Why?”

Rey sighs and rubs her eyes with her palms, wondering what the consequences of sustained sleep deprivation are. Probably madness, or cancer, or warts. She should read up on it; it sounds like an exciting research project. “Because—I’m sorry, I can’t. I just got off my shift at MIT, and have another one tomorrow morning at five. At the diner.”

“Okay, that’s _plenty_ of time!”

“And I’ve still got two coding jobs to finish that are due today, the ones I found through that website Paige told me about—thank her for me, will you? And I want to get them done, and I want to eat.”

“I’ll buy you a sandwich.”

“Waste of money. And I want to _sleep—_ ”

“You can sleep when you’re _dead_.”

Rey sighs. “As long as that’s before my next shift starts.”

Rose lifts herself up to sit on top of the kitchen counter. She is frowning at Rey through bangs that already need trimming again, but she _knows_. She knows that the diner is across town, that Rey has to change two trains and Boston’s public transit sucks, that when things go perfectly and everything is on time (which is never) it still takes her thirty-five minutes to get there.

“Rey. I know you’re busy, but we need representation. It’s important. It’s for an important cause.”

Rey smiles. “Of course it is. They _always_ are.” Gun control and women’s rights and immigration reform and climate change awareness and… every single other hot topic issue. They _are_ important, so important, and Rey is not ever going to argue with that. It’s just that she has three jobs, and she’s still only about eighty-three percent sure that she’s going to be able to make rent this month, and that seems pretty important, too. 

It’s not that she doesn’t feel bad about not doing everything she can to protest the latest oil spill or the lack of maternity leave for zookeepers. Especially not when Rose is still staring at her with that pleading look in her eyes, in a way that makes Rey feel like she should be regretting all her life choices. Which she is, a little.  “This week I just—I can’t. Work is… impossible.”

It’s like everything in Rose deflates—from her hopeful smile to the slight curl at the bottom of her hair. How staged the reaction is, Rey has no idea, but she immediately surrenders to it, walking up to Rose and putting her hand on her thigh, a couple of inches above the rip in her jeans. 

“I’ll come next week, I promise. I’m banking on the fact that there’s another rally planned for next week, right? For an endangered termite colony, maybe?”

Rose lights up once again and claps her hands.

“Awesome! Next week there’s one against the NSA. It’s going to be amazing. I’ll introduce you to a bunch of people who are really active in this advocacy organization I’ve been thinking of joining!”

Rey tells herself not to groan. “It’s okay. I’d rather just hang out with you and Paige. She is going, right?”  She turns around and pushes up on her toes, starting to rummage around her cupboard in search of something to eat. Her stomach, empty and growling, clenches a bit when she notices how little rice she has left. 

“She should. Anyway, you work too much.”

She's down to one single can of beans, too. _Gah_. 

“No, it’s actually really good. This job Jess found for me at the university, it pays really well. Well—” Rey cocks her head, checking the expiration date on a box of Mac & Cheese “—decently. And I was able to pick up a bunch of extra shifts for this week because someone is going to Disneyland or something. And sometimes I find cool stuff in the empty classrooms that I get to keep—being a janitor, that’s where it’s at.” Maybe she could go downstairs and splurge on a pizza. It costs four point ninety-nine, which is exactly nineteen point ninety-six minutes spent mopping floors at MIT.

Rose hops off the counter. “Still, it’s _not_ what you should be doing. You should find something—here, why don’t you have some of my quinoa? That rice is not gonna be enough for you—You should find something that pays more than minimum wage and that has normal hours. There must be someone who’s looking for a human computer or something. I mean, you’re a genius and everything.”

“Yeah, well.” Rey accepts the quinoa with a grateful smile. “Maybe one day I’ll find someone who’s willing to look past the GED I am _so close_ to getting.” One-hundred and fifty dollars close, which she hasn’t quite put aside yet. Plus, the test center is right in front of where her fifth foster home was, which—yeah. 

Not a part of town she particularly wants to revisit.

“You should just… Rey, you should just pick a fancy company, one that works with data and numbers and… I don’t know, and _science_ , and get them to give you some kind of interview. Then you waltz in there and re-discover string theory in front of them. _Bam_ —” Rose claps her hands “—like that. And then they’ll offer you a salary of half a million dollars a year to do it all over again—plus benefits.”

“Right.”

“And you’ll say, ‘Yes please.’”

“Of course.”

“And we’ll celebrate with sushi. From a real restaurant, not the supermarket one. You’re paying.”

“Mmm. Good idea.” Rey pours rice and quinoa in the not-yet-boiling water and turns to smile at Rose, leaning back against the counter. “Maybe I could wow some random CEO with my encyclopedic knowledge of the history of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.” 

No flaws at all with this plan. It’s not as if people tend to treat Rey like a freak when she accidentally lets it slip that she could recite the exact population numbers for the Kingdom of Hungary from the year 900 to 1910 after skim reading a Wikipedia entry only once, approximately seven years ago. 

“Amaze them with that crap about amino-acidic bonds you’re always telling me about.” At least Rose seems to be having fun with Rey. Doesn’t mind her odd, quirky brain too much.

“What if I recited Beowulf in middle English?”

“Nah. I don’t want to hurt your feelings, but it’s actually kind of creepy when you do that. Just floor them by deriving an equation. Or proving a theorem. I’m gonna suggest the Pythagorean one, because it’s the only one I know of.”

Rey laughs, remembering the problem on the board from earlier today. 

_“Describe the proof for the theorem below,”_ someone had written neatly, beautifully, on top of some equally neat and beautiful symbols, and she… well. _“Describe,”_ it had said. And Rey had obliged. 

She wonders absentmindedly if _that_ theorem has a fancy greek name, too.

“The classics are where it’s at,” she smiles at Rose. “Hey, do you want some of this rice before leaving? I could add—” she peeks again into her cupboard and winces “—um, seaweed? And canned mushrooms. And—ooh, is that a mini Sneakers left from Halloween?”

Rose practically runs out of the kitchen. 

“ _Gross_.”

…

Ben is locking the door of his office when the phone vibrates in the pocket of his jeans. 

Taking it out requires quite a bit of balancing—shifting the book he is carrying under his arm, grabbing the keys with his left hand, and then lifting the lapels of his coat to gain access to his pocket. Still, he never considers letting the phone go to voicemail. These calls can come at any hour, for no particular occasion, and always at very uneven frequencies. It doesn’t quite stand to reason that Ben already knows who exactly is on the other end of the phone, well before checking the number. And yet, he is always right. 

Maybe it’s just his odd, stubborn brain. Picking up subtle patterns and using them to weave predictions about the future, like it has since he was barely a child. 

“Sir.”

“Ben. My boy.”

Most of the time Ben has no idea where Snoke is calling from. Fort Meade might be an accurate guess. D.C., too—though it could be China for all Ben knows. It doesn’t really matter: on the phone Snoke always manages to sound almost unsettlingly close.

“Has anything occurred that I should know of?”

Ben makes his way down the hallway, nodding at Phasma when she waves at him from the copy machine room. She’s in late. It’s well past eight p.m., and the Math department has mostly shut down for business. Office doors are closed, and even the grad students’ lounge is uncommonly silent. 

“No.”

“Good. Very well.” A pause. “I am satisfied with our progress.”

So is Ben. For the most part. But Snoke likely already knows that.

“Be in touch if issues arise.” 

“I will.”

…

There is a new problem on the blackboard. A harder one.

Not _hard,_ hard. Just harder. 

That is to say, a little more interesting.

The first one, the one that Rey solved a few days ago—well, that one wasn’t _hard,_ either. It was actually easy. Easy enough that for the longest time she hadn’t even been that tempted to solve it—until she made the stupid mistake of trapping herself running the mop around the podium. The floor was just too wet for her to walk back to the entrance dragging her equipment, and she found herself stuck right under the blackboard. 

Standing motionless and staring at the tiles dry just felt a little too boring for Rey to bear.  The chalk was there, and so was the problem, and Rey… she didn’t even know why it had been there for _weeks_ —since she’d started working here, and from the smudged, half-faded look of the writing even before then. Not because no one else could figure it out, surely, since the students at MIT are supposed to be math geniuses and all that. Probably some kind of inside joke, or a memento, or… something. Whatever.

Still. Rey never managed to finish high school, and she cannot claim to have any idea of what goes on in college classes. But she can read, and the note scribbled at the bottom of the board clearly said _"Do not erase"_ —not _"Do not solve"_. So she shrugged, and not two minutes later the blackboard was full and the floor was… not quite dry, but dry enough that she could step on it and go back to her life. No one would notice a few footprints, anyway. Concepts like clean and dirty seem to be very foreign to fancy college students.

And the first problem was boring and not every interesting, but… this one. 

This one, though.

It’s a tree. 

Actually, it’s ten trees.

Neatly traced, tidily arranged, obviously by the same person who wrote the other theorem. One single sample, and that penmanship is already as familiar to Rey as her own. All of the trees are homeomorphically irreducible and what the problem calls for is—of course, the 3-Sun graph. Rey read about it, some, just a little bit. A few years ago, during her graph theory phase, which happened to fall somewhere between her fourteenth century Korean literature phase and her bioengineering phase. 

Number theory is a little boring, but Rey likes graph theory all right—maybe even a little more than that. The complex parts in particular, are just convoluted and computationally complex enough to take even _her_ mind off… things. And it’s been _so long._

She carefully balances the mop against the podium and leans forward, resting her elbow on the hard wood as she thinks about the problem for a minute. The chromatic polynomial—that’s what this needs. Which will take a while to compute. But then—her heart speeds a little, and she’s only distantly aware of her movements as she reaches for the chalk—then it’s determining the partitions, and summing them, and coloring the vertex—

It’s the sound of the chalk beating on the board that takes her out of the flow of things. It reminds her that she really _shouldn’t_ be doing this. She doesn’t want any trouble, doesn’t want to be noticed, doesn’t want to lose this job. Who knows what this stupid problem is here for, anyway. Not Rey for sure, and this—it’s the opposite of her life philosophy, actually, which is to mind her own business and lay low.

Except that… Oh, this is _fun_.

Except that Rey sometimes feels as if her brain is rotting inside her skull. She has been feeling that for the past year—hell, for the past ten, and this is just…

Fun.

_No one will find out_ , a voice whispers inside her head. _Just finish it. Choose the subgraph that spans the vertexes, and then the formula—_

She is still smiling faintly when she walks out of the lecture hall, leaving behind a blackboard full of numbers and symbols.

…

Ben stops asking after the second problem. 

There is really no point, not when his preemptively irritated “Who solved this?” is met by a whispering silence and some two hundred pairs of eyes glancing  inquisitively around, making it abundantly clear that no one has even the faintest clue who is behind the ghastly handwriting and flawless logic deductions on the blackboard. Ben had promised several perks to whoever would prove the first theorem—an automatic A in the class, a recommendation letter, a paid position as a part-time RA in the Math department—while fully aware that none of those things were bound to be as attractive to a student as the opportunity to shamelessly brag about one’s accomplishments in front of their classmates. 

And yet. The opportunity for bragging is offered, repeatedly, but the silences continues, only interrupted by the shuffling of notebooks and the occasional throat clearing—which he chalks up to the seasonal cold. While he lectures the blackboard is there, in the corner of his eye, and Ben wonders idly if it’s the work of some faculty in the department, with nothing better to do than coming in at night and deriving equations to mess with him. He wouldn’t put it past Hux, for sure—except that the third problem… Not Hux's area of expertise. It would take him months to figure it out. Not less than twelve hours, for sure. 

Not to mention the handwriting. Truly horrific, that.

By the time the fourth problem has been solved, the lecture hall is so full that there are people—students, he assumes, though he can’t recall seeing most of them before—sitting on the steps. They cannot possibly all have signed up for his class, because this is a goddamn fire hazard, and admin would never assign him a room that seats fewer than his total enrollment. It’s the most crowded the hall has been since Ben started teaching five years ago, and he once had a Nobel prize winner come in and guest lecture.

_Undergrads_ , he thinks with a sneer that he doesn’t even bother hiding. Not that they expect him to.

Ben cares very little about educating a new generation of lackluster mathematical minds, or whatever it is that the current MIT mission statement says. The teaching side of his job (one class per year, no possibility of buyout through externally funded grants) has never been more than an unfortunate side effect of having MIT's research facilities and prestige at his disposal. Still, considering the commotion and the fact that he actually seems to have his students’ attention for once, turning the situation into a learning opportunity seems like the bare minimum. 

So he sighs—deep, and pained—and turns around, starting to explain to the masses how the problems were solved. Combinatorics and calculus and then number theory, he goes through each step, trying to slow down and break apart the most obscure passages, and making a valiant effort to keep the admiration out of his tone, on the very off chance that Hux really is behind this, after all.

But no. He cannot be. His mind—it doesn’t work this way.

“Here—odd choice of vectors. Economical, though. Saves one extra transformation, of course.”

Most— _all_ —of the students stare at him blankly, lost a few words into an explanation that was always too complex for them, already spacing out to thoughts of their next class, their plans for the weekend, what to eat for lunch. Whatever it is that fills their lives.

Ben doesn’t care much.

Because this… this _thing_ —for all that it’s as public as it can get, it also feels…

Exquisitely private. A little like a conversation. A slow, pleasant conversation in a language he thought he had made up; a language he wasn’t sure others could speak. A private conversation going on under the baffled eyes of dozens and dozens of people who have no idea what is happening. 

Ben bites his lower lip not to smile, and begins to cover the lecture material.

At the end of class, while he is erasing the whiteboard, he feels someone come up behind him.

“What’s that, Doctor Solo?” 

The students are quickly trickling out of the lecture hall, but the European girl (whose hair is now—is that gray? Silver?) stops by the podium and points at a handful of small symbols at the bottom of the blackboard. Her arm brushes against him when she leans forward, and the collar of her shirt dips low, showing a glimpse of cleavage that even someone as uninterested in cleavages as Ben can’t avoid noticing. 

The cleavage doesn’t really stand a chance, though. Not when the oddest, scariest, most brilliant use of K5 is sitting right here, in front of his eyes. Not to mention… Not to mention what the student is pointing at, which is…

“Nothing,” he lies.

“It almost looks like… a code,” she muses, smiling at him. 

Ben doesn’t smile back, but his eyes shift to the board. The fact that he has a temper, and that any type of interaction with him is unwise, is blissfully well known in the department. Silver hair, though, appears to forget it a little too often. And now he wants her gone. 

“It’s chalk,” he tells her, holding her eyes. Ben lets some of the irritation seep into his tone, and she immediately takes a step back.

“Okay. Well… good class. Thank you, Doctor Solo.” Her smile is quick and tight before she runs into the hallway. But Ben doesn’t pay attention to her, because…

She’s not wrong.

The small line at the bottom of the board that he hadn’t even noticed earlier, that _is_ code. And a pretty hard one to break, at that. Which means that it takes him more or less ten seconds before deciphering it and reading what it says. 

_More problems like this one, please._

Ben’s eyes linger on the words for far too long before he erases them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi! Hello! I know this story has a weird premise, but I really hope someone is reading it because it's my most beloved child ❤️So:
> 
> \- I started writing this fic in march 2018, wrote over 50k words, and then just dropped it to write ABO and double ween fish porn and the like! (#noregrets). So over two thirds of this fic are written! My plan is to post one chapter per week or so, finish writing the rest in the meantime, and once I have the whole thing done start posting more frequently! 
> 
> \- In this fic math is The Force, but I don't know anything about math. As in: nothing. I initially wanted to get smarter people than me to proofread this abomination, but then I decided that really, the math part is only meant to add flavor to the plentiful amounts of sex Ben and Rey are going to be having, and figured that I didn't care enough to get it right. If you do know some math and find glaring mistakes, maybe you can think that this is an alternate universe with a different kind of math? (Similarly, I have never set foot on the MIT campus, and while I've been in Boston several times it was always for conferences and I've never seen much of the city, so yeah: made up alternate universe ftw 😬😊)
> 
> \- Several billion thanks to Jen for beta reading this mess and for always being so supportive 😭


	2. The Girl

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am not worthy of the gifts I have received:  
>   
> [Eyereheights made these amazing edits 💕](https://twitter.com/eyreheights/status/1220426873185894401)  
>   
> [AlhenaCrimson made a stunning gif of Ben and Rey in front of the chalkboard which is beyond perfect (and check out the whole thread for the art, too) ❤️](https://twitter.com/AlhenaCrimson/status/1220416610726555660)  
>   
> [Driverrsbitch made a stunning moodboard for the fic 💙](https://twitter.com/driverrsbitch/status/1219748168964984832)  
>   
> [And so did Sofondabooks who, as usual, is an angel fallen from the sky 💛](https://twitter.com/sofondabooks/status/1219116401316679681)  
>   
> [And of course Jen beta'd the chapter and made me another moodboard that I do not deserve 💚](https://twitter.com/EverSoReylo/status/1220477177571041281)  
>   
> Thank you soooo much to everyone who has shown enthusiasm for the fic 😭 Ily you guys ❤️  
>   
> 

“What are you writing?”

“Nothing.” _Just matroid theory. My favorite, as it turns out._

“Seriously—it’s clear that you are writing _something_ , what are you—”

“Nothing.” Rey finishes scribbling the coefficient matrix for the latest problem, folds the napkin in two before shoving it into her pocket, and then flashes Ron a quick smile. “Are Mr. Allen’s eggs ready?” _I’ve estimated that his tips decrease by thirteen percent every four minutes he has to wait for his order,_ Rey thinks of saying. But it doesn't seem like a smart idea, so eventually she just opts for: “He gets grumpy if they’re late.”

Ron ignores her question. He continues frowning and distractedly flips three sausage patties. “Is it numbers? Why are you writing numbers on a napkin?”

_Because I have homework. Because the latest problem is by far the most challenging, and I will need the whole day to figure it out if I want to have the solution ready for my shift tonight. And whoever it is that has left it on the blackboard for me, I want to show him (her? them?) that I can take on anything that’s thrown at me._

“No reason.”

“It’s a phone number, isn’t it?”

“The eggs? Are they ready?”

The vertical line in the middle of Ron’s forehead deepens. “That’s a lot of digits, for a phone number.”

“Which is why it’s clearly _not_ a phone number—”

“I hope you’re not thinking of giving Mr. Allen your phone number. For one, he’s been married forty years—”

“Ron—”

“—for two, I’m pretty sure he used to work at the post office before retirement, so I don’t think he’ll be good sugar daddy material—”

“No. I’m not going to give a patron my phone number—”

“For three, I thought you didn’t date.”

Rey sighs heavily, trying not to laugh. She is not usually a fan of nosy people, especially if they stick their nose in her own affairs, but with Ron she doesn’t quite mind. It’s a bit like having a surly, red-headed, occasionally very protective older brother.

Still, she has no intention of telling him the truth. “And I don’t. Date, that is. It’s not a phone number. It’s… just numbers. Math.”

“…Math?”

“Yes. For my GED exams.” As far as lies go, this is an off-white one.

“Math. My worst subject in high school. Had to retake it in the summer. Twice.” Ron shakes his head with something that could very well be disappointment, either in Rey or in the Boston school system. Then he shrugs and plates Mr. Allen’s eggs, adding a slice of pineapple to the side before handing them to Rey. 

Her stomach, as usual, growls. She glances at the clock on the wall—thirty-four minutes until break. She plans to ask Ron to make her Eggs Benedict. He will huff and puff, but then he’ll fix her a huge plate.

She smiles. “Thank you. I’ll take this out and be right back.” 

“If you were just doing math, why were you grinning like a fourteen year old writing a love letter, then?”

“I wasn’t grinning.” She pushes the kitchen doors open with her hip and scans the tables looking for Mr. Allen.

Ron’s “Yes, you were,” follows her into the breakfast area. 

…

When he sees the figure stepping out of the classroom Ben thinks nothing of it. 

It’s the way of university buildings—swarmed with undergrads who think that leggings are pants during the day, emptied out and eerily silent at night. When it’s late like now, past ten p.m., the hallways are always dark and full of echoes, the lights flicker on only when the motion sensors are activated, and the few people who can be found walking around are graduate students. 

And, of course, the janitorial staff. They wear black polo shirts and cargo pants; carry around their mops and buckets and carts that make a bit of a ruckus. After hours, they save the building from seeming completely abandoned, and they are approximately a million times less annoying than the undergraduate students who fill the hallways during the day. Which is why when Ben sees someone—a girl?—leave the lecture hall where he usually teaches, he makes note of the uniform and the mop and doesn’t think much of her presence.

It’s because he can’t find his leather gloves that he came in the first place. Outside, the weather is hovering between snowing and sleeting, and it’s cold enough that Ben doesn’t want to drive home without. He is almost sure he brought them with him this morning, which means that he must have forgotten them in the lecture hall.

It doesn’t matter that Ben has never been the type to suffer the cold.

And his presence here has nothing to do with the fact that he wouldn’t mind the opportunity to check if the latest problem has been tackled.

It’s been two days, after all. And the solver asked for more combinatorics, which prompted Ben to spend days looking for something interesting. Something whose solution is still unpublished. 

Combinatorial optimization. Not Ben’s field of research, but—

The light switches are just left of the door. Ben flips them on after stepping inside the lecture hall, and for a second his eyes are useless—blinded and unseeing. Then his pupils habituate, and…

His heart thuds, and then skips a beat when he notices that the blackboard is now full. He stands in the entrance for a moment, taking in the messy handwriting as if it were the face of a beloved old friend. Then, as he jogs to the podium and up the steps, his eyes begin to skim over the solution.

There are the matrixes. And the approximation algorithms. The network flow, yes, and the path… beautiful. _Really_ beautiful. The minimum cut—he actually reaches out and _touches_ it with his fingers, the final step of the solution. A very nonsensical impulse, but it’s just so—

Ben freezes.

Whatever it is that finally gives it away, he doesn’t know. 

Maybe it’s the fact that for once the signs on the chalkboard look fresh. Precise. They lack that distinctly fuzzy quality that usually greets Ben when the solution to the problem has been sleeping in an empty lecture hall for a few hours, waiting to be discovered in the morning. 

Maybe it’s the way the glint of the light catches on the still wet floor, reminding Ben that someone just walked out of this very room after cleaning it. 

Maybe it’s simply that the only people with access to this room are faculty, students, and staff; it’s very clear that the first two groups do not have the ability to solve this fucking problem, or they’d be tripping over themselves to publish it in the _Annals of Mathematics_ and let every single person in a five-mile radius know. Which only leaves— 

_Impossible_ , he thinks, shaking his head. _Ridiculous_.

Except that it’s not quite impossible. Not at all. And when you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be…

“No fucking way,” he whispers, staring at the writing on the board. 

Beautiful _._ All of it. The solution is correct, and it’s a mess, and it’s perfection. And Ben hasn’t found math this beautiful in… 

In a long time.

“Wait,” he murmurs still staring at the symbols, and he’s an idiot. He is a moron, because his voice is barely loud enough to carry five feet away, let alone into the hallway and over the noise of a cleaning cart. 

He has to _physically_ force himself to tear his gaze away from the board. And then to move away from the podium.

“Wait,” he repeats. 

This time his tone is significantly louder, but it’s for nothing. When he runs out into the hallway, the slippery floor making his feet slide out of the door, there is no one to be found.

…

“I need to find someone. Someone who works for you.”

It’s unclear whether the man has even heard Ben’s words. He continues slouching in his office chair and doesn’t bother looking up from the old, thick TV in front of him—even though the show he’s watching has clearly gone to commercial. Or maybe it’s just the shopping channel.

“The janitorial staff is not responsible for missing objects in classrooms, offices, or dorms,” he drones on automatically, like this is a sentence he has to repeat several times a day. His eyes are still glued to the catheter infomercial. “If any of your possessions went missing you may file a claim, but if you cannot prove that you misplaced them yourself I would advise against—”

Ben rolls his eyes and slams his open hand into the countertop—with more strength than is probably necessary. It does the trick, though, because the man—Bob, Ben can now read on his name tag—jerks up in his chair, finally looks at him, and begins to pay attention.

“Mute that, will you?” Ben gestures to the TV with his chin, and Bob scrambles forward and turns it off altogether. 

Blissful silence.

“Oh, um… how may I help you, Mister…?”

“Doctor Solo. Department of Mathematical Sciences. I need to know who cleaned lecture hall 107 in the Mirzakhani building last night.”

“Uhm, yes, of course.” The man shuffles the papers on his desk for a few seconds, and then looks up at Ben again, apologetic and helpless. “What building is that?”

“The Mirzakhani—”

“The number. What number?”

Ben briefly closes his eyes, calling an image of the campus map. _Photographic memory is of no use if you don’t organize it_ , Luke used to tell him. In this, at least, he was right.

“Thirteen, I believe.”

“Ah, thirteen. Could it be Josh? He usually—”

“No. It was a woman.”

A girl, really.

Which is the main reason Ben came here himself. He briefly entertained the idea of putting one of his grads on the case—maybe Mitaka, or Mulligan. Thing is, asking one of his students to find him _a girl_ seemed not only like words that a sane person would never say, but also something that might eventually lead to a Title IX complaint.

“Ah. Uhm… What did she look like?”

“I fail to see how it is relevant. Shouldn’t you be able to tell me from the shift rooster?”

“Ehm, not really?”

Ben’s nostrils flare. “How so?”

“Well, we use lots of temp staff, so I, uh, wouldn’t really know off the top of my head.”

“Then find out.”

“Yes, of course. But it would really help if you could tell me something more, like her name. Or what she looked like.”

Ben doesn’t even try not to sigh.  _Small_ , he thinks of saying, but for some odd reason something his mother used to tell him when they still thought it a good idea to talk to each other pipes up in his head. _Ben, you’re six three. Being shorter than you doesn’t necessarily mean being small._

He shakes the memory away, together with the expected surge of irritation that accompanies it, and opts for the more objective: “Dark haired. And her hair was pulled up in some…” He gestures vaguely with his hands for a moment, frustrated. “Balls.”

“… balls?”

“Buns, I think they’re called.” God, the _indignity_ of this. The girl better be the person who solved the problems. 

“Buns? Is that like a ponytail, or…”

Ben just stares at Bob, who clears his throat.

“Right, right. Uhm, I’m going to ask the agency and let you know. You are Doctor Solo, you said? S-O-L-O? Like the pilot?”

Ben groans internally. “Correct.”

“I’m assuming your email is in the database?”

He nods. “Let me know as soon as possible.” Ben pretends not to notice the way Bob’s shoulders slump with relief as he makes his way out of the maintenance office.

His email app pings not three hours later with a brief message from one Robert Roman.

_R. Johnson. The agency can’t legally give out her phone number or other contact info, but I thought you might be interested in knowing that she has another shift today. 5-9, building thirteen._

…

The tone is all right, polite and not particularly menacing. But there are other elements to consider: it’s already dark out, and for all the money this university likes to milk from undergrads in tuition, the buildings are not that well illuminated; not to mention that it’s getting so freaking cold that no one is around at this hour of the night.  Which is why, however polite and non-threatening the “Miss Johnson?” might be, it startles her into half jumping, half turning around towards the voice. 

It’s past nine p.m., the area in the back of the Math building is absolutely deserted, and this person—a man, a large man, a _very_ large man Rey is sure she has never met before—knows her name. 

It can’t be a good sign.

One of Rey’s hands slip into her pocket and closes around her house keys, sliding it between her fingers. The other one clutches tighter around her phone. Rose and Paige were supposed to be here to pick her up five minutes ago. Where the hell are they?

“Yes?” It comes out suspicious and distrustful. Which, Rey supposes, is quite accurate.

“Do you have a minute?” 

_No._ “How do you know my name?”

“I just want to talk.” 

The man is not coming closer, but Rey takes a step back anyway. “Who are you?”

He must pick up some of Rey’s discomfort, because he also steps away from her, as if to give her a little more space, and says: “Don’t worry.” His tone is… odd. Appeasing, but there is a trace of irritation underneath—almost as though he finds the process of having to reassure her that he doesn’t plan to sex-traffic her or harvest her organs a little annoying. “I don’t mean anything weird.” He pulls his hands out of his coat pockets, holding them up as if to show her that they’re empty. 

Rey almost snorts. As if what made being alone with this man dangerous is the fact that he might have a weapon, when he is probably a foot taller and twice as heavy as she is.

It must show, that she’s pretty unconvinced, because he sighs—he really _is_ annoyed—and slowly lowers one hand to lift the hem of his black peacoat. “I’m not here to murder you or kidnap you—or whatever you’re imagining. I work here.” It’s a few seconds before she realizes that he’s showing her his badge, which is clipped to his belt. It’s angled so that Rey cannot quite make out what the letters of his name are, but after the comma she can clearly read _Ph.D_. And then, underneath, in large, black, capital letters: _MIT - FACULTY_. 

Okay. So he does work here. Big deal. 

Rey isn’t reassured in the least, and tightens her grip around her keys.

“How do you know my name?”

He lets the hem of his coat drop, and it falls against his upper thigh. His voice is deep and disturbingly beautiful. “I teach advanced mathematics in the building you just finished cleaning.”

Rey feels a chill travel down her spine, a chill that has nothing to do with the freezing temperature. 

_Calm_ , she tells herself. _He’s probably just mad that you forgot to empty his trashcan two days ago._ He sure looks like the type who’d get emotionally invested in something like that. Snotty, not particularly friendly. Probably with a trust fund.

“If I’m doing something wrong, you can just leave a note in the maintenance room,” she says. Even attempts a small smile, hoping it will get him off her back. “I’ll find it on Monday, and—”

“I’m the one who wrote those problems on the board.”

_Well, shit_. 

_Shit, shit, shit._

Rey’s feet shuffle back a little. He doesn’t follow her, but continues pinning her with an intense, relentless stare that makes her positively icy.

_Shit._

“I’m sorry, I’m not sure what you’re referring to. Is there a board I should have erased? Because we’re told not to, and—”

“Did you solve them? The problems?”

Out of the blue, a not completely formed thought hits Rey: that when she was working on her matrices, and solving polynomial equations, and drawing reduced trees into the condensation of her bathroom mirror, somewhere, in a dusty, not well-monitored corner of her head, she had been picturing the person who wrote the problems. She had imagined him to be a pleasant, white-haired, elderly professor wearing tweed jackets with elbow patches. A nice, affectionate, loving gentleman who only knows how to text because his grandkids taught him and always has a supply of Werther's Originals in his pockets.

She had certainly never imagined this broad, tall man— _how tall is he?_ —who is dressed completely in black and doesn’t look that much older than Rey. She’d guess mid twenties, but he’s faculty, so surely he must be older than that? 

She truly has no idea. 

“I don't know what problems you’re talking about.” She puts up another smile, but her eyes dart to the side. _Where_ is _Rose?_ “It’s cold. And I really need to go. If there is something wrong with my work, you could tell my supervisor.”

He doesn’t seem to be listening to her. “What about the message you left? The code you used took the NSA years to break. And the key is unpublished. Where did you learn it?” 

The way he is looking at her…

No one has ever looked at Rey like that, she's sure of it. “Sir, you must have me confused with someone else.” She swallows, starting to feel like a broken record. And very, _very_ uncomfortable. “I’m going to leave now.”

He studies her, clearly not believing a word she said. He seems to take a second to think, and as he does he works his jaw in displeasure. Then he reaches some sort of decision: his expression clears and he nods, if not amiable at least polite.

“Okay. It was nice meeting you, Miss Johnson.”

“Likewise,” she lies.

She really doesn’t want to give him her back, but there’s no way around it, and while he’s wearing a coat and she can’t tell whether his bulk is because he’s fit, or just from half a dozen layers of clothing, her experience is that she’s usually fast enough that she can outrun most men. And while this guy’s dark eyes are… unsettling, no other way of putting it, his pose doesn’t seem to suggest that he’s about to pounce on her. So she feels safe enough to turn from him and—

“The third problem. It was sloppy, the way it was solved.” Rey freezes, rooted to the spot. “Not quite a mistake. But if the problem hadn't asked for the logarithm, the method would have led to the wrong solution. It was a stroke of luck that it worked—”

She spins back before he even finishes the sentence.

“It was _not_. It was a conscious choice to—”

He is already smirking, and Rey—Rey is stupid. 

A real moron.

“Right.” Even his hair looks smug now. Black and wavy and thick and just a little too long. “I thought so.”

She screws her eyes shut. _Fuck, fuck, fuck._

“I didn’t mean—” 

“You solved those problems.” His brow is knitted. And his voice, it’s... still deep. Very deep. “Why don’t you want to admit it?”

She takes a deep breath and orders herself to calm down. She can probably talk him out of reporting her. If she promises to stop.

“Listen, this job—it’s a really good job for me, and—”

He laughs. Once, silently. “It’s not. Not for someone who can do advanced combinatorics better than most people on the MIT campus. Why don’t you want to admit that you solved the problems?” he asks again.

Rey presses her lips together. _Because_ , she wants to say. _Leave me alone._ But instead she just stares at him, sullen and hostile, and after a few moments he must get tired of waiting for an answer.

“Where did you study?” he asks. He is remarkably more patient now that he’s gotten the truth out of her.

Rey looks up at him, and he’s a little closer now—not inappropriately so, but still. And he… Oh, he has no business being so tall. Rey knows he cannot be the tallest person she’s ever met—her third foster father was almost seven feet tall—but there is something in the way he carries himself, in the set of his large shoulders and the purposeful way he’s staring down at her, something that makes him look… 

_Big._

“I went to East Boston.” She is careful not to mention that she didn’t graduate.

He actually rolls his eyes. “I meant college. But feel free to start reciting your academic history from kindergarten.”

“East Boston is a high school,” she says, just indignant enough on behalf of it. “A _good_ one.”  It’s not, not really. And God, is she defending her old high school? How did she get here?

“Yes, right.” He doesn’t seem very interested. “Where did you go afterwards?”

“After what? I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“For university. Where did you study the combinatorial math? The matroid theory? Are you a student worker here?”

God. She _knew_ she shouldn’t have solved those problems. She knew it, and this is all her fault. “No.”

The man cocks his head to the side. “You have an accent. Did you study in the UK?”

_Rude_. He is rude, too. 

“I didn’t study in the UK. Or anywhere else.”

For the first time in the conversation, he looks genuinely surprised. “Okay then. How did you even know about trees?”

“From the park.”  He lifts one eyebrow. Well, clearly no sense of humor there.  “I just read up on them. In my spare time.” Where on Earth are Paige and Rose? This conversation must have been going on for at least ten minutes. 

“You read up on advanced math? In your spare time?” He looks skeptical.

“A little bit.” 

“You. A janitor.”

She narrows her eyes. “Hey. Janitors are just as—”

“Yeah, yeah. I have no doubt that janitors are smarter than most academics. Doesn’t take a lot, to be honest.” Surprisingly, his tone is not sarcastic. “But you have to admit that janitors do not usually dabble into combinatorics for fun.”

God, he is—probably the most off-putting person she’s ever talked with. And the way he’s staring at Rey, like she is some kind of exotic bug and he wants to figure out her mating habits. All this attention focused on her, it’s not the type of reaction she’s used to eliciting. Especially not from men who look like this one. 

She shrugs, hoping to broadcast nonchalance. “Maybe they do. What do you even know about janitors?”

“I know that they aren’t usually able to prove unsolved theorems that have puzzled the math community for a while, for instance.” He must notice the way she glances up at him. “Yes, Miss Johnson. The solution to the last problem was unpublished. There are scholars who have been working on it for years.” He pauses. “Congratulations on your accomplishments,” he adds softly.

Rey is starting to feel nauseous.

“I… I have to go. To work.”

He makes a face and looks around himself, as if to say, _Really? Is this the best excuse you can come up with?_ “You _are_ at work.”

She flushes.  “Some people have more than one job. Listen, I don’t know what you want, but—”

“I want to sit down with you,” he says. His voice is deep and firm and it makes her flush even harder, because why does he even—why would he want to sit down with her— “And talk about math.”

Rey swallows. “No.”

_Absolutely no._ It always ends poorly when she shows her freak. Poorly for her. 

“Why?”

“Because I’m not interested.”

“It doesn’t have to be now. It can be at a cafe, or in a public place of your choice where you feel safe—”

“I am really not interested.” _God_. She takes another deep breath. “But thank you. And sorry for solving your problems. I didn’t mean to—”

“ _Rey_! Hey, Rey, over here!”

They both turn to look at the car that just pulled over. It’s only a few feet away from them, and Rey has no idea how she could miss it.

Paige’s face peeks out of the driver side window. “Hey babe, you ready to go? Traffic's  a bitch tonight.”

“Yep!” 

She doesn’t spare the man a glance. She just smiles at Paige and starts heading for the car, a mix of relief and—

“Wait.”

Why she stops and turns to look at him, Rey couldn't say. Because she’s stupid, probably. He is patting the back pockets of his jeans, searching for something, and the way he moves—it’s quite unique. Deceptively graceful and precise, but also with a great deal of energy behind it. A curious mix of strength and elegance. 

He finally finds what he’s looking for and holds it out to her, wordlessly.  It’s a card. White. Rectangular. It says Ben Solo, PhD—not Benjamin, but Ben. And then, underneath, an _mit.edu_ email address and a phone number. 

Nothing else.

“Call me if you change your mind. Rey.” 

He says her name slowly, like he's trying out an unfamiliar food for the first time. Like an afterthought. Her eyes run up to his when she hears it, and—they are a deep, clear brown. Challenging to look into, for some reason.

This— _all of this_ —it’s not like her. Not at all. 

“Please,” he adds before she leaves, and Rey is left with the impression that it’s not at all like him, either.

…

“Who even was that guy? Did he give you something?” 

Rey’s heart is still beating a little too fast, and Rose's voice sounds too loud from the back seat.

“No one.” She buckles the seat belt. “Just a pamphlet. I’m starving.” Her shift at the diner starts in forty-five minutes. No time to grab dinner before.

Paige smiles.  “Look into the glove compartment.”

Rey leans forward to pull the lever. “Twix! My favorite!”

“Candy is the one and only reason we were late, by the way.” Rose’s head peeks out from between the two front seats. “Paige totally lied about traffic.”

“You are _so_ forgiven.”

“Told ya, Paige.”

“But you’re not getting any.”

“Wait, what? There’s two in the package—you _monster_.”

Rey bites into both pieces of chocolate at once, and tries to forget everything about the conversation she just had.


	3. The Phone Call

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am sorry this update took so long! I was trying to figure out my life, but NOW I HAVE (well...sort of. not really.) and I will be updating weekly again ❤️Thank you for your patience! And super thanks to Jen and Nancy for the beta ❤️❤️

There is a spelling mistake on one of the signs—on the tallest, widest, flashiest one.

Not that Rey is going to be the one to point that out. The cause is a good one, the protest is well-organized and peaceful, the slogans are catchy, and Rose’s friends… they are hipsters, yes, but for the most part not half as annoying as Rey would have predicted. 

Still, pipeline is _not_ spelled with a ‘ _y’_ , and habitat really needs a ‘ _h’_ , and Rey has never thought of herself as a grammar nazi, but she can’t stop thinking that the whole sit-in might be taken a bit more seriously if only the signs were correct.

As it is, she simply cannot tear her eyes away from _“pypeline,”_ which all things considered might be for the best, because—

“…and the Salem spill. Boy, that was _bad_. The worst.” 

A guy about her age in an Emerson College sweatshirt whose name Rey didn’t quite catch (probably Blake, or Byron) has been talking her ear off for the past twenty minutes. He’s long given up on holding his sign upright—Stop Colonialism with a small ‘2’ between the _o_ and the _l,_ which Rey has to admit is pretty clever—in favor of explaining the history of pollution to anyone who will listen. And some who won’t. 

“An excavator that was supposed to repair a previous incident struck the gasoline transmission line, and _boom_. Everything explodes.” He snaps his fingers under Rey’s nose. “Two people dead, just like that.”

“Sounds awful,” she says. Albeit incorrect, since that specific incident happened in Kentucky. Still, Rey smiles noncommittally and nods, wishing it were ten degrees warmer. She’d even settle for five.

“Yeah. Anyway. Did you know that there’s a really nice vegan coffee shop nearby?” 

_Ugh_. Emerson sweatshirt inches a little closer, and it’s all Rey can do not to close her eyes. “No.”

“I’ll take you, after this is over.”

She pretends she didn’t hear him and looks around the field. 

The police, standing on the other side of the barriers, are mostly minding their own business, chatting amongst each other and every once in a while yawning loudly, with white puffs of air coming out of their mouths. A balding guy in a black uniform has been playing Farm Heroes on his phone and eating a cinnamon roll for the past twenty minutes. Rey envies him intensely. When her eyes catch Rose’s across the crowd—thirty-four people, Rey counted when they first got here and no one arrived after them—she narrows them.

_You okay?_ Rose mouths.

_I hate you_ , Rey answers.

Rose blows her a kiss and goes back to talking animatedly with the organizer of the protest.

She hears the first shouts not even a minute later. She scans the field to figure out where they’re coming from, and after a few seconds she notices the group of people walking towards them.

“Who are they?

Emerson sweatshirt is already busy chatting up someone else and barely pays attention to Rey. “Um, what?”

“The people wearing ski masks. Heading this way.” It doesn’t seem right. Sure, it’s cold, but it’s not _that_ cold.

Emerson looks where Rey is pointing.

“Shit.”

_Shit, what?_ Rey wants to ask, but then she notices where his gaze has landed. At least three people are carrying baseball bats, and they’re making their way to the barriers that separate the police from the protesters.

“This is supposed to be peaceful,” Rey says with alarm, looking around for Rose. “We have to tell them to get out.”

“Don’t go. It’s not a good idea—”

After that, it all happens very quickly. Rey takes a step forward, and another, and then breaks into a jog to intervene and do—something? She’s not sure. Talk some sense into this group of idiots, probably. But before she can reach them the police start shouting at them to stay back, and when they don’t—all hell breaks loose. 

One moment Rey is looking around, trying to find Rose and make sure she’s safe and out of the way of the clusterfuck that’s about to happen. And the following—which can’t be more than a handful of minutes later, but Rey imagines that time has a way of dilating when idiots are swinging baseball bats and truncheons around you—she’s bent over the hood of a police car and—

“…under arrest. For defiant trespass. You have the right to remain silent.” The officer is a woman with a crisp, bored tone of voice, and Rey wants to _die_. 

It must show on her face, because Emerson, who is folded in the same exact position as Rey on the next hood over, smiles at her and asks, “Your first time being arrested for protesting?”

Rey glares at him, horrified. “Isn’t it yours?”

He winks at her before being dragged away by a policeman. “It’s a rite of passage,” he yells before being pushed into the car.

The officer who is arresting Rey—God, God, _God_ she’s being _arrested_ —might be bored and annoyed, but she has kind eyes. She adjusts Rey’s handcuffs and asks her if they are too tight. Rey can only bring herself to shake her head, dumbfounded by the mess that her life has become. 

_Jesus._

“Come on. We’re going to the station.”

They are on the road for about twenty minutes. Rey counts the willow trees, and focuses on not throwing up in the back of the police car.

…

“There is someone here to see you.”

Rey lifts her head from where it’s buried in her hands and blinks, confused. 

“To see me? Who?”

“I don’t know, your majesty. I’m not your social secretary.” The guard shrugs and dangles a pair of handcuffs in front of his face. “These go on your wrists, by the way. On the front.” 

Impossibly, the hallway is even colder than her cell. About a third of the fluorescent ceiling lights flicker on and off as they make their way to an area of the station Rey hasn’t been in yet. There are no windows and no clocks, which makes it impossible to figure out the time. A couple of hours after midnight would probably be a good guess, but who knows?

Rey shivers, wishing that they hadn’t taken her jacket and scarf before locking her up. Then again, she is also wishing many other things: that she’d told Rose to stuff it when she insisted that not going with her to the protest was basically akin to directly dumping a barrel of radioactive waste in the Charles River; that she’d had some food before heading out of her apartment; that she’d been smart enough to mind her own business.

She is wishing for a lot of things, none of which are going to come true. 

The guard stops in front of a grey, nondescript door and opens it.

“Here you are, sweetheart. You only have ten minutes, so don’t get too comfortable in there.”

Rey looks between him and the door a couple of times, unsure of what to do.

“What are you waiting for? Chop chop, your highness.” 

He shoves her forward with a hand on her back, forcing her to stumble inside the room, the hands cuffed in front of her stomach making it next to impossible to keep her balance. The door immediately slams closed behind her, and by the time she’s stable enough on her feet to look up the room is silent and…

She is not sure who she expected to find waiting for her in an isolated interrogation room in a police station in South Boston at an unspecified time of the night.

She is not sure, but it definitely wasn’t _him_. 

“What are _you_ doing here?”

Ben Solo is sitting, composed but comfortable, on a chair on the side of the table that is farthest from the door. He takes a brief look at her—dirt-streaked jeans and messy hair and, of course, handcuffed wrists—and his eyebrows lift in what really seems like… derision.

Definitely derision.

“Now, that tone sounds a little ungrateful, considering that it’s—” he lifts his forearm and glances at his watch, and who even wears a watch these days? “—three forty-one a.m. and I’m here with you, even though there are a number of other things I’d rather be doing.”

Rey almost snarls. “Who told you I was here?”

He ignores the question and gestures to the chair in front of him.

“You should probably sit down. You look a little shaky over there.”

It's a testament to how shocked Rey is that she complies without questioning him. The wooden chair is icy cold and too angular; it digs almost painfully into her flesh and bones. Solo is sitting on an identical one, and yet he somehow makes it seem like a leather couch.

“I didn’t give out your name or anything. Why are you here?”

His eyes fall on her wrists. Again. “My card was in your belongings, apparently.”

_Oh, God._

_Oh—God._

“Are you…” She is very tempted to run out of the room. She’d be tased, but it might be worth it. “And they just... They just called you?”

He shrugs. “I think the officer who brought you in might have been a little concerned about you.”

Mortified. Rey is absolutely _mortified_ , that this man who she’s talked with for less than ten minutes is here to see her at—well, this is not her worst, not really, but somewhere in that general area for sure. 

She lifts her elbows to the table and buries her face in her hands. 

“Oh, God.”

It must have been when Rey refused to make a phone call. Even though she was really just trying to be practical: she could have called Paige, but then what? Rey has no idea if Rose was arrested, too, and Paige wouldn’t have bail money for her sister _and_ Rey (if that’s even how bail works) which means that she’d probably try to borrow it from someone else and—nope. Not a good thing for Rey, to owe money that she’s never going to be able to pay back.

_“If you don’t want to call your parents, you should at least call your lawyer_ ,” the kind-eyed officer told her with a trace of concern. “ _Or there’s no telling how long you’ll be in here.”_

_Impossible. My lawyer is currently on vacation with his spouses, who happen to be my gardener and my personal shopper,_ Rey had wanted to quip back. But the officer seemed genuinely nice, so she had opted for a polite, _“No, thanks.”_

What a mistake.

What a catastrophically bad idea. 

What a tragically idiotic twenty-four hours.

“Are you okay?” 

His voice, calm and low, has her straightening and looking up at him. In the sharp, white overhead light, she realizes that he might be a few years older than she would have guessed the other day. Late twenties to early thirties, probably. Even sitting down like he is now, back straight but relaxed against the too-small chair, he looks larger than life and intimidating.

Big.

There is a giant paper cup from Starbucks close to his side of the table, and Rey’s gaze latches onto it and doesn’t let go. At least it spares her the indignity of having to look him in the eyes.

“I am _so_ sorry about this. I just—I haven’t really had time to wash my jeans since last week. That’s where they must have found your contact information,” she tells him, hating the half-apologetic note in her voice. 

She studiously avoids mentioning that since the night he gave her his card, she has taken it out of her pocket and turned it between her fingers quite a few times; looked at it as if something new might have magically appeared since her last examination. Though it never has, of course. Just his name, and the contact information that Rey had no intention of using. 

Ever.

“Right.” His voice is so, _so_ deep. “Too busy fighting the establishment.”

That, at least, gets her worked up enough to lift her eyes from the coffee cup.

“Actually, _no_. I worked a fourteen-hour shift on Monday, and then on Tuesday my friend’s car broke down and—” 

She stops herself as soon as she notices the trace of humor in his eyes. He is… not quite teasing her, no. He is too serious for that, too stern. But he is definitely getting a kick out of the ridiculousness of the situation, and Rey…

She can’t help chuckling. And moaning. And burying her face in her hands, again.

His smirk deepens a little.

“Here.”

He lifts one hand to slide the paper cup towards her. Rey eyes it suspiciously.

“What is it?”

“Poison, of course.” 

She looks up at him, and he’s staring at her with that expression of his that for some reason, even though they’ve spent a cumulative total of fifteen minutes together, she’s starting to recognize.

“What do you think it is?” There is a trace of mockery in his tone. But… not an unkind one, no. 

Still, this is not a patient man, Rey’s starting to get the sense.

She reaches for the cup, feeling ridiculous with her bound wrists. “Thank you.”

He doesn’t answer. Not patient, and not particularly polite, either.

She takes a sip, and the way the hot liquid warms her from the inside is—heaven. That he was able to guess that Rey likes her coffee to be half-cream and with about twelve spoons of sugar is a little concerning, but she’s not going to dwell on it now. It’s the least alarming thing to happen to her today, anyway.

“You don’t seem the type to get herself in prison.”

She arches her eyebrows. “I don’t?”

“Smarter than that, I’d say.”

“I’d like to point out that you know _nothing_ about me.” When he doesn’t give any sign of minding her acerbic tone and continues to look at her calmly, Rey immediately regrets it. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to… It’s—my friend Rose. She’s very active and socially conscious. I try to support her causes, but sometimes…”

“I can imagine.”

There is a part of Rey that almost expects him to reprimand her. _Do you realize the gravity of what you’ve done? The situation you’ve put yourself in? The danger to yourself and others?_ And yet he seems remarkably unperturbed. He just studies Rey for a long moment and then nods, as if reaching some sort of long-deliberated decision.

“I’ll go see how to get you out of here.”

“Oh, no.” She shakes her head a little too violently, and even more hair slips out of her ponytail. “No, you don’t have to. As you said, I’m sure you have better things to do with your time.”

It hits her there and then that it’s probably true. For all that the other day he came across as a bit dangerous, after Rey reconsidered and replayed their conversation in her head, she realized that she’d likely overreacted. Ben Solo is clearly just a young professor interested in her math skills. Period. He is probably married.  Rey’s eyes slide to his left hand and see no ring, nor the line of one. 

It doesn’t mean anything. Plenty of married people don’t wear wedding rings. But even if he isn’t married, then he’s probably been in a relationship for the past six years with a platinum blonde art historian who speaks four languages and is only one inch shorter than he is. Or maybe he is dating a French astrophysicist with blue hair who briefly worked for NASA and is now pregnant with their first child. The only reason they haven’t tied the knot yet is that they believe the institution of marriage is obsolete and the basis of modern capitalism, and between the two of them they make so much money that the tax cut is just not incentive enough.

All of a sudden, Rey feels nauseous at the thought of Ben Solo getting a phone call about a random nineteen year old while in bed with his partner. Of him kissing her on the forehead after saying something about having to take care of a punk kid he doesn’t even really know.

God, she is insignificant.  _God_.

“I mean… thank you. Really. But this is fine. I can figure this out on my own.”

“Really.” The sarcasm in his tone is very obvious.

“Listen, you don’t have to do this. We’ve only talked once, and I was… not polite.” He lifts one eyebrow, a silent “ _no shit_ ” if she’s ever seen one, and she immediately wants to take the words back. “For which I _apologize_. Though, in my defense, you were quite insistent, and it was late and dark. _Anyway_. My point is, I’m sorry they called you and woke you up, and I’m… grateful for the coffee, which is…” _the best thing that happened to me in the past month_ “great, and that you came here to check on me, but there is no need for you to do anything more than this.”

The way he looks at her, it’s… disturbingly intense. Odd, too: like Rey is simultaneously the most interesting and the most puzzling thing he has ever seen. It’s all she can do not to squirm on the damn chair.

“Why wouldn’t you admit it? That you solved those problems?”

She blinks, slightly taken aback by the change of topic.

“I still haven’t admitted to it. Technically.” 

He presses his lips together and his jaw works a little. It’s clearly some kind of tick of his that shows when he’s even vaguely irritated—which seems to be something of a perpetual state, around her. Or maybe around everyone.

“Rey.”

She sighs, trying to ignore the way he pronounces her name. She really does kind of owe him an answer. ”I didn’t want to get in trouble. That job at MIT pays really well.” She sighs, again. She probably should use the past tense. She has a shift tomorrow night, and there is no way she’ll be out by then. And it’s not as if she’s irreplaceable. 

He nods, though it’s not quite in understanding, and stands up. And up, and up, and up, because he is…

He really is big, isn’t he.

He nods goodbye in a gesture that seems a little too formal for the conversation they just had, and then walks to the door. He is almost out of the room when Rey hears herself say:

“Doctor Solo.”

He turns around, unhurried.  “Ben.”

Rey blinks. As if she would ever address him as Ben.

“Can I ask a question?”

He just nods again, once.

“That fourth problem. The matroid one… you said it was unsolved?” 

He slowly shakes his head. “I said the solution was unpublished.”

Ah. Yes. Rey doesn’t even pretend not to know the difference between the two terms. But it’s not really important, because the question she really wants to ask is: 

“Have _you_ solved it?” 

“Yes.” He doesn’t hesitate to answer, but there is no conceit in his words. Just the facts. The fact, singular.

Rey nods, swallowing. Her throat is a little dry. “So… So you know how it feels.”

“How what feels?” 

“This.” The handcuffs make it hard to gesticulate. Not that if her hands were free she’d be able to explain herself better. It’s just an oddly nonsensical gesture, after all; an uncharted movement that simply encompasses the two of them. “Being… like this.”

He studies her for so long, Rey is almost sure that he has no clue what she means. But then something shifts in his eyes, and she begins to wonder if no time at all has passed. If it’s the way he’s looking at her that makes this moment stretch out, as though he’s trying to take Rey apart and piece her back together.

“I do,” he answers softly.

_He does._

She opens her mouth to ask… she’s not quite sure what, yet. There are a lot of things that she would like to know, but maybe for now he could just tell her if—

A loud rattling sound to her right makes her jump in the chair.

“Time’s up.” The guard who lead Rey to the room walks in with a bored expression. “You all done in here, Doctor?”

Doctor Solo— _Ben_ —seems to have some difficulty tearing his eyes from her. 

Or maybe Rey is just being fanciful.

“Yes. We’re done.”

…

They release her two hours later with a pat on her back and curt “Bail’s been paid.” No matter how many times Rey asks, they refuse to tell her who paid it.

Not that she can’t figure it out for herself. 

Miraculously, in her personal effects, among the mess of pennies and the house keys and the tube of mint-vanilla chapstick that has probably expired, Rey finds a fifty dollar bill. One that she is dead sure was never in the pocket of her coat.

“Excuse me? This is not mine.” She holds the money out to the policewoman with the kind eyes, who is apparently on one of the longest shifts of her life. The woman doesn’t take it, and smiles tiredly at Rey.

“Maybe your bail fairy dropped off some cab fare.” 

It gets Rey home, with plenty of cash left for breakfast at the diner across the street from her apartment. As she digs into her waffles, she fails not to think about Ben Solo, and what he might want from her.

…

“There is someone.”

“Someone?”

It’s five thirty a.m., but Snoke’s voice on the other end of the phone doesn’t sound scratchy from sleep. 

Ben is not surprised.

“Someone who could help build part of the algorithms. Though I’m still not sure to what degree.”

“Is he a student of yours?”

His first instinct should be correcting Snoke— _she—_ but for some reason Ben can’t quite bring himself to. 

No matter. He is not under the impression that he can keep any secret from his mentor. He’ll know soon enough, anyway.

“Not yet. I might need some… resources, to make it happen.”

A pause. 

“Whatever you need is at your disposal. Keep me updated.”


	4. The Judge

Rey agonizes over what to wear for what is probably the first time in her life—bless her wardrobe made up of exactly three ratty pairs of jeans, four sweaters, and five t-shirts—and then, against her common sense, she caves and knocks on Rose’s bedroom door with a miserable expression.

“What do I wear for a court hearing?”

As it turns out, getting arrested for protesting man-made environmental disasters _is_ some kind of rite of passage, because Rose looks at Rey with a mix of envy and pity and then reaches up to hug her. 

“I’m _so_ sorry. I really wish I could trade places with you. And, like, only thirty percent because of the activist cred it would give me.” Her arms tighten around Rey’s shoulders. “Okay, maybe forty.”

Rey hugs her back, trying not to think about how odd it always feels to be this physically close to another person. _Lack of physical contact in your formative years,_ her social worker would say—if Rey hadn’t stopped talking with her social worker the very second she got out of the system.

“Ok, so.” Rose scans Rey from head to toe with an assessing frown. “What you want is a ‘Your honor, this is all a big misunderstanding, it was a wrong place, wrong arrest’ kind of outfit.” 

Rey really hates the word outfit. “Right.” 

“What’s the most elegant thing you own?”

“Mmm. Maybe my black hoodie? And my dark wash jeans, but they have a tiny rip at the knee.”

Rose gives her a comically appalled look.

“But, uh, I guess I could sew it shut?”

“Yeah. No. I’d rather send you in one of my work overalls.”

After a few harrowing hours of debate, Rey ends up borrowing a black dress from Paige (“ _It’s what I use for job interviews. Though I usually don’t get the job.”_ ) and tries not to think too much about the fact that Paige is some two inches shorter than her.

Or that she is going to a court hearing after being arrested for the privilege of standing in the cold and begging people not to dump radioactive waste into a river.

Or that she doesn’t have a lawyer, and her request for a court-appointed one apparently didn’t go through, and she might have to defend herself.

Rey tries not to think, period.

She gets to the courthouse with barely two minutes to spare, and of course—god forbid she gets a break every once in a while—the courtroom is nowhere to be found. She takes the folded envelope with the summons out of her pocket to re-read the directions, but it’s pointless. Rey has never forgotten a number in her entire life, not even once. She is not at all surprised to see that she indeed needs to go to room 307.

_Shit_.

She must look close to desperate, because the guard who let her in smiles pleasantly at her.

“Did you need any help?”

“Oh, yes. My summons says that my hearing is in room 307, but I can’t—“

“That’s Judge Cantor’s office. Down the hall, turn right before the water fountain, and it’s the fourth door.”

_Right. She was exactly there, not two seconds ago._

“There must be a mistake, though. I’m here for a hearing. That wouldn’t happen in a judge’s private office, right?”

The guard leans over her shoulders to look at the letter and shrugs. “307. That’s what the summons says.” He checks the time on his phone. “Also, you’re two minutes late. Word is, Judge Cantor really hates people who are late.”

_But of course he does._

Rey stops briefly to take a sip from the water fountain, because her mouth is suddenly desert-dry. It costs her a handful of precious seconds, but it does make her feel marginally better, at least until her firm knock on the heavy oak door is met by a muffled, impatient, “ _Finally_. Come in.”

Rey closes her eyes and sighs.

_So be it_ , she thinks as she steps into the room. _I’m going to prison for life, then._

The first thing she notices is the judge, sitting hunched over behind his desk—a frail-looking man who was probably at least three inches taller before he reached what has to be the twelfth decade of his life.

Or maybe he’s not. Maybe the judge is not frail-looking, or small, or hunched over. Maybe he is a perfectly regular-sized man, but dwarfed by the presence of Doctor Ben Solo sitting across his desk. Doctor Ben Solo, who seems to become exponentially more massive every time she finds herself near him. 

Rey tells herself that she’s surprised to see him here, but whether it’s true or not, she is not sure anymore.

Her stomach simultaneously sinks and tingles, and for a handful of seconds she truly has no idea what to do. She should ask the reason her supposed hearing is happening in a private office, or why the hell Doctor Solo is included in it. She should politely but firmly demand an explanation, but her mouth just won’t open. Rey didn’t make it to nineteen years old by freezing in place when things happen to her, but the time she spends lingering in the doorway and looking suspiciously between the two men stretches too long. By far.

Then Ben Solo nods at her and says in his stupid, _stupid_ voice, “Come in, Rey.” 

With little choice, she closes the door behind her and steps inside.

…

“No precedents. Not even a traffic ticket—though you’re barely old enough to have your license, so that doesn’t mean much. Still, no sign that you’re associated with those troublemakers who went to the protest looking for some action.” The judge speaks slowly but firmly; his tone is prosaic as he peruses the file open on his desk and lists facts about Rey as if she weren’t in the room. Whether the recap on Rey’s criminal history—or lack thereof—is for Doctor Solo’s benefit or just normal procedure in meetings such as this one, she doesn’t know. “It does appear that what happened the other week was just an… unfortunate misunderstanding.” 

Rey adjusts the hem of her dress so that it almost reaches her knees, and silently thanks Rose for her outfit picking skills. For the first time in two weeks, she feels a glimmer of hope that she won’t rot in prison for a couple of decades.

“However.”

The judge turns a page on the file, and whatever optimism was blooming instantly evaporates, the glimmer of hope souring to acid in her stomach. Even from upside down, she can recognize the picture clipped to the manila folder. It’s Rey, about a decade ago. Her stomach twists with dread. 

“However, there are other factors to consider. You have no formal education to speak of—didn’t even finish high school. You currently hold several dead-end jobs—have only ever held similar jobs in the past, in fact. You’ve been in the system since you arrived in the US, about ten years ago—interesting, that you kept that accent of yours after all this time—but you have not taken advantage of the resources at your disposal. In fact, no one has heard anything from you since the day you turned eighteen.” A heavy sigh. “Removed with urgency from three separate foster families. Your files are sealed and motioning to access them seemed a bit overkill, but… I can imagine.” 

The judge’s tone is compassionate, but Rey’s entire body is as heavy as lead. Her first instinct is to say something. Tell him that no, he _cannot possibly imagine_ the insults, the constant humiliation, the cold and the hunger. But inside this room the center of power lies very much away from her, and she finds that she is afraid of speaking out. If there is something she has learned in the past ten years, it’s to be silent.

She is very aware of Doctor Solo on the chair next to hers, sitting in the same well-mannered, calm way of the police station. He has yet to make a sound, or a movement; he is technically not even in Rey’s field of view, but it’s as though there is an energy vibrating outwardly from him, a presence that invades every corner and nook of the room and has her flushing. 

Or maybe it’s just the thought of him listening to the judge talking about her past that makes Rey's cheeks burn hot.

“These are not good signs. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t like it at all, but predictive and risk factors do exist, and people who have your kind of… history, well. They tend to end up in front of me. In a courtroom. Through no fault of their own, often, and I do take that into consideration, but very often there is little I can do about that, because of minimum mandatory sentencing guidelines. Which is why I tend to think that nipping in the bud any sort of law-breaking behavior is for the best. Normally, petty disorderly offense comes with up to thirty days in jail and a fine, young lady.” For the first time since she entered the room, the judge’s eyes lift to meet Rey’s. His glasses are perched low on his nose, in that precarious way older people who only need them to read usually position them. It’s something Rey has always found slightly creepy, and now—now it’s even worse. 

_Thirty days in jail_. _Thirty._

For… for standing in the cold, really. She is about to blurt out how absurd the situation is, when the judge lifts his index finger and continues. 

“ _But_ , I hear that you’re very good at math.”

Rey freezes. 

Did he just say…

“At… At math?”

“And our prisons are crowded enough as it is. Which is why I believe that Doctor Solo’s proposal is best for everyone involved. But mainly for you, as it not only keeps you out of jail, but it has the additional bonus of getting you into a line of work that valorizes your talents, or whatever it is that you mathematicians call the—” he waves a hand between Rey and Doctor Solo “— _things_ that you do with numbers and whatnot. It will also allow you to maintain a clean criminal record.”

Rey leans forward, staring first at Judge Cantor and then at Ben Solo—still motionless in that larger-than-life way of his, except that now he is looking faintly bored. 

“What… what proposal?”

“Oh, right. Getting ahead of myself.” The judge nods. “I will release you under Doctor Solo’s supervision, and you will be working as a… what will she be working as, again?”

“Research assistant.” Solo's voice is… it’s _so_ _deep_. And bored.

“Right. On a number of interesting and enriching projects, I understand.”

Doctor Solo nods, dispassionate.

“But I—”

“Very well," the judge cuts her off. "He will send weekly reports for the next six months. Of course, should he decide that overseeing you is not worth his valuable time anymore, we’ll meet again and rethink this strategy. And I also have some conditions. The main one is that within the next six months you obtain your GED. I assume that if you can do math fancy enough to convince a full professor from MIT to babysit you for months, you can also memorize a few key dates of the Civil War, or whatever it is that people study in high school nowadays. Also, no more protests—unless they are actually _peaceful_.”

Rey has no idea what to say to that. To any of this. _I read any book on the Civil War I could put my hands on before I turned twelve,_ comes to mind, but it seems like something that might be misinterpreted as deliberately rude. So she just remains silent, rooted to her chair, until Judge Cantor speaks again.

“Very well, then. Off you go.” He makes a shooing motion towards Rey, and then turns to smile cordially at Doctor Solo, who is unfolding from the chair. He and the judge briefly shake hands, and—

God, God, _God_ , he is tall.

Doctor Solo turns and takes a step towards Rey, close enough that he has to bend his neck to look her in the eyes. “Come on, Rey. Let’s go.” 

She can feel the warmth of his hand through her jacket as he herds her out of the room.

…

They head out of the courthouse wordlessly, walking side by side—if that’s even the right word for the way he moves. 

He—stalks. He stalks with barely contained energy, and Rey can’t quite figure out where it’s coming from, but it gives an odd impression of power even when he’s sitting down in silence. It’s as if Ben Solo were in constant tension, ready to spring at any moment and yet never really doing so. Rey works out, and she runs, and she’s always thought of herself as fairly tall and fit, but his strides are so long that she’s out of breath before they’re even out of the courthouse doors.

“Wait, can you slow down, please?”

“Keep up, will you?” 

So no, clearly.  “I—where are we even going?” And why the hell is she following him, again?

_Because he somehow convinced a judge to turn you into some kind of legal, indentured math servant, that’s why._

“There’s a coffee shop across the street. We can talk details there. Or we can do it here in the middle of the sidewalk, but you look like you’re very close to hypothermia.”

It catches up with her in a rush, everything that just happened in the courthouse: the judge reading her files and looking at her old picture, being fucking arrested for protesting against a stupid pipeline that she knows perfectly well is going to happen anyway, being pawned off to an unknown, unlikable, dangerous-looking man by a _United States judge_.

All of a sudden, Rey feels angry and tired and sick of this and—No. _No_.

“No.”

She stops, planting her feet on the sidewalk. He doesn’t realize until he’s taken a couple of steps past her, and then turns towards her with a long-suffering expression.

“No?”

A man with a briefcase briskly weaves between the two of them, and then heads in the direction of the courthouse. Then it’s a girl with giant headphones going the opposite way, and a woman walking an adorable Corgi puppy. Doctor Solo just stands there, staring at Rey with an expression that manages to be both calm and annoyed at the same time.

“This cannot possibly be legal,” she tells him.

That look of amusement, again. “Wanna go back in there and lecture a judge of... one hundred and fifty years, I’d guess, on the intricacies of the American legal system?”

“You can’t force me to come do your math. I—”

He scoffs. “I can do my own math, thank you. You’d be doing your own.”

“Doctor Solo, I—”

“Ben, I told you,” he corrects her. “Aren’t you supposed to be a fast learner?”

She glares at him. “I feel very uncomfortable with this. _Ben_.”

He sighs impatiently and crosses his arms over his chest, studying her. Rey can read it in his eyes for a brief moment, that he wouldn’t mind shaking her. But it goes away fairly quickly, and his tone is not rude when he asks, “Why?”

“Because—I—” _God_. “I can’t figure out what—what on Earth would drive you to go chat up a judge to have me… to have me solve integrals for you, or derive equations, or—or—” she wipes her face with her hand, and remembers only halfway through that Rose put makeup on her this morning. _Shit_. “I...”

A beautiful woman in high heels walks between the two of them and heads up the steps to the courthouse; then, abruptly, she looks back to give Ben the once over. He either doesn’t notice or simply doesn’t care, because his eyes stay pinned on Rey’s. 

It hits her, somewhat aggressively and out of the blue, that he is a handsome man. A very, _very_ handsome man. Why it hadn’t occurred to her earlier, she cannot say, but now that it has Rey simply cannot unsee it. Maybe it’s the morning light, or the way his coat opens to show the black sweatshirt stretched across the broad chest underneath— _all. that. black_. Maybe it’s that it’s not her habit to think about men and how they look, period, but he’s standing in front of her and he is very big and he just looks… 

Good.

Rey wonders if the pretty French astrophysicist tells him, every once in a while. If Ben glances back at her with a pretend-annoyed look, and sighs, and maybe tells her gruffly that _she_ is the one who looks good. If she is the only person in the world who has ever received a real smile from him.

_God_. Rey has no idea where any of these thoughts are coming from.

So she just says, “You realize that I have no idea what you want from me, right?”

Ben shrugs. “Fair enough,” he answers dryly. “I mean, it’s not as if I’ve offered to tell you, if you came to that coffee-shop and listened to me for five minutes.”

Going to a secondary location. With this guy. Seems like a terrible idea, but Rey can’t think of any response that wouldn’t be dramatically rude, so she just sighs and motions for him to go ahead.

“Whatever. Fine.”

He presses his lips together, not quite managing to hide a smile.


	5. The Scone

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> THANK YOU EVERYONE FOR THE LOVELY COMMENTS I LOVE YOU ALL ALSO I LOVE JEN AND NANCY FOR BETA READING THIS I LOVE EVERYONE IN THIS BAR

Once they are in the coffee shop Rey sits at a small table while Ben goes to order, trying to spin the situation positively and to focus on the fact that at least she might get some free coffee out of this. After what just happened in the courthouse, she not above having him drop five dollars on her. 

Actually, he kind of owes her an eighteen buck Frappuccino.

Ben comes back a couple of minutes later with a tall paper cup and a small plate with a raspberry scone. It’s the very same scone she covertly, _very_ covertly eyed when they entered the cafe; for Ben to have noticed he’d have to have preternatural observational abilities, or just… care, which is definitely not the case, so Rey decides that it must just be a very fortuitous coincidence. 

When he hands her the cup, the tips of his fingers brush against hers. Rey feels a small jolt somewhere in the pit of her stomach, but tells herself to ignore it. It’s just a hunger cramp, anyway. She should have had breakfast.

“Thank you.”

Like the other day at the police station, he doesn’t bother answering and sits back in his chair, looking at her with his customary bored expression as she bites into her scone.

“How old are you?” he asks when she’s done chewing.

For some reason, the question strikes Rey as amusing. “You mean you don’t know?”

“Yes.”

“Yes…?”

“Yes, I mean that I don’t know.”

 _Yeah, right._ “Nineteen.”

His eyes widen and he almost recoils.

“Hard to believe you didn’t know. Since you’ve looked at my file, and all that.”

He looks at her levelly. “I didn’t look at your file. The judge did, when I reached out to ask for… possible alternatives to jail time.”

Rey sort of hates it, that she should probably be grateful to this guy. She takes a sip from the cup and is surprised to see that it’s not coffee, but hot chocolate. Probably the sweetest she has ever drunk.

Her favorite. 

“And why did the judge decide to listen to you? A random… what are you? A math teacher?”

His eyebrows arch, but it must be a valid point, because when he answers he appears to measure his words. “It wasn’t me that he listened to, but someone I know.”

“Who?”

“Suffice it to say, Judge Cantor is friendly with someone I work with. Same alma mater and same graduation year, I believe.”

“One hundred and fifty years ago?”

He actually smiles. “Sure looks like it, no?”

 _Sure does._ “It sounds like you went through a lot of trouble to help me. Calling in favors from your colleague. Coming to the police station in the middle of the night and then to the courthouse on a fine Wednesday morning.”

Ben remains silent, gaze fixed on her. Rey holds it for as long as she can stand to, and then looks back down at her scone. 

“My age… Why were you so surprised? Did you think I was younger?” 

He hesitates. “Older.” The word is just a little clipped, which makes Rey think that for reasons she can’t quite imagine he might be unhappy about it. Then again, Ben Solo doesn’t exactly strike her as a happy person. 

Must be all the black he wears. 

“You stopped putting new problems on the board.” In the past weeks, the blackboard has been painstakingly erased every time Rey has cleaned the lecture hall in building thirteen. No trace of Ben, either. Not that she expected to see him again, not after the police station.

“I did.”

“Why?”

“Because none of the students were able to solve them. And most of them aren’t advanced enough to understand them, even when broken down into pieces.” 

The information does surprise Rey a little. It’s not that she isn’t aware that she is particularly good at everything that requires memory, and manipulating information, and logical reasoning. It’s just that she has never been able to grasp what the precise difference between herself and others is, even before she started deliberately hiding the things she could do. Her entire life was spent with people who had little experience with formal education, and with very little contact with people who did have it. Still, she always assumed her talents wouldn’t be that different from MIT college students’.

“Is that why you need me?”

The corners of his lips curve. “I don’t _need_ you. But I do think that your skills should be… cultivated.” 

Rey sighs. “Right. Listen, I… thank you. For the offer. And for the scone. And for paying my bail. But I really don’t have time to waste on the math. I work two jobs and can barely pay rent as it is. I have no idea _when_ I could possibly fit in the math and still—“

“You do realize I’m offering you a paid position, right?”

Rey blinks at him. _Paid?_

No. No, she hadn’t realized that.

“What do you mean?”

“You would be working. For me. I’m not asking you to do community service or similar bullshit. In fact, I’d rather you left your other jobs. Since they don’t seem particularly… edifying.”

He does sound a bit like an entitled asshole. But, “How much would the job pay?”

Ben takes his phone out of his pocket and taps at the screen for a few minutes. “This is the contract I had one of my most recent RAs sign. We’d tailor it to your needs, of course, but pay and benefits should be around the same. I’m not sure how health insurance works for non-faculty, but I can have someone find out for you.”

Rey hasn’t had health insurance since she got out of the system, and she still wants to cry at the thought of the two hundred dollars that was spent at the dentist last year when she got a small but ludicrously painful cavity, so benefits would really be lovely—

She gasps when she finally scrolls down to the bottom of the contract.

“ _What_?” She glances up at him, sure that he is pulling her leg. “This is a lot of money.”

He shakes his head. “Believe me. It’s not.”

“It _is_. You pay people this much to sit down and do stuff like—like solving the problems on the board?”

“Ideally, yes. In actuality,” he mutters, “I pay them to sit down and not solve shit.”

Oh, boy. He is probably a terrible boss. Always unhappy with his minions’ work, always finding something to criticize. Rey can picture him very well: being a total asshole, throwing tantrums and making scenes and slamming doors when someone miscalculates a derivative. 

But, _God_ , he pays well. 

“Wait. Wait, so… I would come in. I would do the math. Correct?” He nods. “And you’d pay me… You can’t possibly pay me this much.” Except that he obviously can. And he’s starting to look at her like he can, and like her questions are stupid. “Where does the money come from?”

“Why does it matter?”

“Because.”

“It’s my Bar Mitzvah money.” 

Rey frowns, and he sighs.

“The money comes from grants. Naturally.”

“Grants,” she repeats, dubious.

“In academia, several federal and private agencies front the various expenses of research groups based on their proposed work—”

“I _know_ what a grant is.”

He nods. “Very well, then. Would you like to know the grant identification number? The funding agency? The off-site co-investigators?” He is mocking her, Rey's pretty sure. But she is too… too confused by this situation to take offense.

So she keeps on frowning, and gestures vaguely between them. “What—what is _this_?”

It’s clear that he knows what she’s asking, but he doesn’t bother answering her. He’s obviously starting to become impatient, and his lips press together before he says, “You are free to do what you want. If you would like to work for me, the position is yours. If not, we can go back to the courthouse immediately and tell Judge Cantor. Then you get a real hearing and whatever comes after that.”

“Ok. What if I _can’t_ do it?”

“You have functioning legs. Just walk back and—”

“The math. What if I can’t do the math?”

The annoyance in his eyes dissipates, and his expression softens a little. “Ah. Interesting. You’re afraid that people will think you’re a freak because you’re too smart, and also that you won’t be smart enough. Which one is it, Rey?”

It's a little like a slap in the face, what he says. Offensive and obnoxious and very rude. The tone he uses, though… it’s almost gentle, suddenly knowing, as if Rey’s thought process is not so much a mystery to him, and that’s when she realizes that—

“I’ve never said it.” She is cold, all of a sudden. Maybe even shaking. Even with hot chocolate in her belly and sitting in the warmth of the well-heated coffee shop. “I’ve never said it. That I’m afraid people will think I’m a freak.”

Ben’s eyes are patient. Kind. “Is that so? My apologies, then.”

She hasn’t. She is sure that she hasn’t. She just doesn’t talk about this stuff with people, ever, which is why having someone who barely knows her put it into words is simply terrifying, and at the same time the reason a stupid, idiotic part of her begins to think that maybe— _maybe_ —

Maybe she could stand to work with this man. Maybe.

Oh, _God_. She must be mad.

“If I did this.” She wets her lips. “If I came and did the math for you, you wouldn’t tell anyone. Right?”

He tilts his head. “What do you mean?” 

“It will—people wouldn’t know that I’m the person solving the problems, right?”

He studies her. “Several people will have to know. My students and colleagues, just by virtue of the fact that you’ll be working in the same department. HR. My department Chair. But there is no need to send you to conferences, or to publish your work under your name, if that’s what you’re asking. Your level of exposure can be as high or as low as you like.”

As high or as low as she’d like. It _almost_ sounds good. 

The thing is, it’s not as if Rey has much of a choice. And even if she did, this is by far the most logical one. This job would pay more than what she’s making right now, require fewer hours, and put her in the perfect position to get her GED. 

_And_ , a small voice inside her head suggests, _it would be fun. The problems on the board were fun._

Except that she feels uneasy about this. And while she shouldn’t be surprised, especially considering the way this offer came about, there is just…

Something. 

Something about this man, that she can’t quite make sense of. 

There is a feeling. Something more solid and tangible than just an impression, something that tells her that this man is dangerous. Whether in general or just to Rey herself, she has no idea. 

_Tread carefully_ , she tells herself. _Very carefully._

She takes a deep breath and looks up from where her hands are cradling her cup of hot chocolate straight into his eyes.

“Okay. Okay then, I’ll do it.” She is half surprised to hear the words come out. “On the condition that you’ll let me have control over how… exposed I am. And that you don’t force me to work on stuff I hate. No numerical analysis, please. It puts me to sleep.”

“Me too,” he mutters, too low to be addressed to her. For a moment, he looks intensely satisfied. It’s just a fleeting second, and his air of combined boredom and annoyance is immediately back, but it lasts long enough for Rey to wonder what exactly she has gotten herself into.

“I have a condition, as well,” he says.

 _Really_? “Um… you do?”

The corner of his lip shifts up as he nods. “Don’t ever, _ever_ call me a math teacher again.”

For the first time in his presence, Rey can’t help but laugh.

…

“What about the dual elliptic curve?”

“It strategically weakens the cryptographic security.”

“Is it identifiable by others?”

“Unclear. Unlikely, however.” Ben could probably identify it. 

The girl— _Rey_ —could, too. With some training.

“How long to access the kleptographic backdoor?”

Ben wedges the phone between his ear and shoulder to free his hand and starts running a quick test on his computer.

“Fourteen seconds. With a possible error of one point two seconds in each direction.”

“Very well done.” It is not every day that Snoke sounds so pleased. Very nearly never, in fact. Only a handful of years ago, the hope of gaining his mentor’s praise was what motivated Ben through most of his work. Nowadays, though… it barely registers. Something has changed, and Ben is not sure what it is yet. “I will share your algorithm with my team for further stages of development. Was the calculation time-consuming?”

“It was trivial.”

Snoke’s answer is a low, sustained laugh. “I can imagine.” There is a brief pause in which Ben thinks that the call might be over. But Snoke interrupts him right when he’s about to say goodbye. “So you met with the girl today. Rey Johnson.”

Ben is not surprised to hear that by now his mentor knows of Rey, as there is very little that Snoke doesn’t know, and even less that he cannot find out. Nothing, possibly. Not to mention that it’s only thanks to Snoke’s contacts that today’s meeting could be arranged, and Ben did not for a moment think that Judge Cantor wouldn’t report back to his old friend. 

Ben is not, _cannot_ be surprised. Which means that the sudden tension in his body must be due to something else.

“I have.”

“Will you two be… collaborating?”

“For the foreseeable future.”

Snoke hums in what Ben interprets as approval. “I did some research, on my end.” 

Ben forces himself to take a deep breath and lean back in his seat. Makes his hand let go of the edge of his desk, too.

“Have you?”

“Poor child. What an unfortunate situation.” Ben knows better than to read compassion into Snoke’s words. “And what a promising young mind. There are records of her performance on standardized testing. Outstanding, really. Until they weren’t anymore, of course.”

Based on what little he knows about Rey and her attitude towards her talents, Ben might have guessed as much. “She was able to prove Lehmer's conjecture. In less than 48 hours.” Probably even less than that, given her schedule. 

“Indeed? Lehmer will be happy to hear that.”

Ben huffs out a silent, humorless laugh.

“She could very well be one of the great mathematical talents of her generation, Ben. On par with you, perhaps. Or close enough. As unlikely as that sounds.”

It doesn’t sound unlikely at all. Not after seeing her truly horrifying handwriting on his board, or after hearing her talk about numerical analysis as something too dull for words. And not with the way she looks at the world around her—at Ben himself. There is something in her, something he cannot fully understand. Something that dares him to try not to hold back.

Or maybe not. Maybe Ben is just being foolish, and overthinking her phenomenal understanding of combinatorics. Must be.

“Perhaps,” he answers.

“I trust you will keep me informed of her progress?”

“Of course.” 

“Very well. Goodnight, Ben.”

The call drops before he can reply.

When the phone rings again, less twenty minutes later, he is so absorbed in the code he is writing that he doesn’t bother checking the caller before answering. 

“Yes.”

“Um… Hi.” 

He immediately straightens. Because the voice is—

“This is Rey.”

He swivels around in his chair until he’s giving his back to the monitor. “Rey?”

“Yes. Um, Rey Johnson. The one who is supposed to do the math for you?” Like everything else she does, or says, her call has surprised him into a bit of a stupor. The time it takes him to recover is seemingly too long, because Rey continues, “You know, given the lengths you’ve gone to to get me to work for you, you could probably make an effort and memorize my name.”

He is… relieved that she can’t see him crack a smile. “I know who you are, Rey.”

“Are you sure?”

“Rey.”

“I’m not sure I believe you. Name the last three times you creepily and unexpectedly showed up where I was.”

He is _not_ smiling. “You know, I am seriously rethinking my decision to hire you.”

She laughs, and Ben realizes that she is more open and relaxed than the other times they’ve talked in the past. He briefly wonders if she finds his physical presence intimidating. People often do, mostly because he is so freakishly tall. To say that Ben doesn’t usually mind discouraging others from approaching him would be an understatement—on the contrary, it’s something that he’s spent most of his life cultivating. But Rey… For some reason, he wouldn’t want Rey to feel...

 _Nineteen_ , a voice in his head supplies. _She is nineteen_.

God.

“About that. I wanted to let you know that I was able to quit the MIT job effective tomorrow, but I also work at a diner, and it will take a couple of days for the owner to find a replacement and for me to train them.”

He feels a frisson of irritation. “I see.”

“But all my shifts this week start at four p.m.. So I could still come to your…” she hesitates. “Your office, or whatever, I guess, in the morning. I’d just need to get out a little early.”

He stifles a sigh and tells himself that it doesn’t matter. Because, in the grand scheme of things, it really does not matter. He doesn’t even know what he’s going to have her do, for fuck’s sake.

“That shouldn’t be a problem. For one week.”

“Yep, it shouldn’t take any longer.”

“As long as you do come in. And I expect you to be punctual.”

This is… interesting. Because Ben doesn’t give a fuck about the hours his students and RAs keep—never has, as long as they get the work done, however disappointingly. In truth, he’d rather not have them around if possible. Mentoring is… not something he enjoys. Why Rey is different... well. 

That’s for Ben to find out.

“You know, I hate to tell you, but you kinda _sound_ like a math teacher.”

He has to catch himself before chuckling.

“I will see you on Monday, Rey.”

He hangs up without waiting for her answer.

**Author's Note:**

> You can find me [on Twitter! 💕](https://twitter.com/EverSoAli)


End file.
